Capitol Report: The Unbalanced Budget… Again

Statement

This past Monday it felt like we were all Bill Murray in 1993 reliving a bad day for the sixth time. It wasn't just because it was in fact Groundhog Day, but because President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2016. For the sixth year in a row, his proposed budget is fraught with higher taxes, more spending, and skyrocketing debt. It does nothing but hurt hard-working Americans who are attempting to rebound from the languishing economy, which is why this proposal was dead on arrival and will not pass.

The president's budget proposes an astonishing $2.1 trillion in new taxes to be coupled with the $1.7 trillion in taxes that his administration has already imposed. To put that in perspective, if you make $40,000 a year, it would take you 25 million years to earn $1 trillion. That is 25 million years to earn less than half of Obama's proposed new taxes in this budget. These new taxes will drive up the cost of living and lower wages, a devastating combination for hard-working families. We cannot allow that to happen.

One aspect of the president's budget that would have a hugely negative impact on our district, as well as folks throughout rural America, is the increase on the death tax. You pay taxes all of your life; it is ridiculous that you are required to pay even more after you die, and increasing the amount adds outrageous insult to injury. This tax hike will make it much harder for America's 28 million small businesses and nearly two million family farms stay in their respective families. The death tax already forces some into selling the family business, but an increase will force even more families into selling rather than passing it on to the next generation. Rural counties are consistently losing population, and it is largely because of cases such as this.

Instead of raising taxes and creating an environment where people increasingly have to close or sell their businesses, the president should be making it easier to do business. I have presented common sense solutions that give job creators a chance to succeed, such as making the Section 179 tax exemption permanent and fixing an overly complex tax code to make it fairer and simpler.

Even while the president has found these new ways to tax Americans, his budget still spends more than it brings in. It spends $4 trillion in FY 2016, with Obamacare and entitlement programs making up half of that. The president's budget grows total federal spending by seven percent in the next year alone, and 65 percent ($2.4 trillion) over the next decade. It is clear that the federal government does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. The president's budget does nothing to curb spending, it increases it.

President Obama has added more to the United States debt than our first 42 presidents combined, and with his proposed increase in spending, the national debt will continue to increase. Currently, the debt is over $18 trillion, which is more than $56,500 per American citizen and more than $150,000 per taxpayer. The median income in the Eighth District is just over $36,000 meaning for most folks in our district their share of the debt greatly exceeds what they make in a year. We cannot keep running up this debt for our future generations to deal with. It must be addressed now.

It is time to make common sense solutions a priority. We need to cut spending, reduce the debt, and make life easier on the hard-working middle class, so that we can create a sustainable budget that does not bankrupt America's future.

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